The moon that night was humongous, its illumination put all those neon lights on restaurants, small shops and gambling houses to shame. Not for the lack of trying, however. One particular establishment – the Minakuji Casino was especially bright, shining brightly with its golden shades together with skylights of various eye scratching colors. Without those lightshows Konoha may have seemed like a depressing place, young people dying left and right, people ambitious enough to leave the protection of the village disappearing and being sacrificed for the natural darkness in wild ones’ hearts…
The lights and bright colors helped shake off that impression. It did for Mana all the time… Even if Minakuji, when approached closer, smelled of vomiting alcoholics thrown out so that they didn’t disturb the other clients’ illusions of luxury and cheer. Even if brawls were more than common with the only concern of the staff there being that they happened off the social screen, out of sight meant as good as averted, the casino’s bright colors still had that cheering effect for whatever reason. Even if people unable to express their violence yet drunk of their feet commonly harassed the small-folk. Mana could recall hearing Hisako tell her a story about that place once, how she had a mission to scatter one such group of drunkards…
Or maybe it was no mission? Maybe she said she was just beating on a bunch of lowlifes? No. The violence had a goal, Hisako needed intel from them because she was chasing some maniac. Either way, knowing Hisako there was plenty of murder and “justified” bloodshed because the blood being shed was that of filthy and drunk as a slipper scum. The less details of that story Mana remembered the better…
The door to Mana’s room nudged slightly and mother’s curious eyes slipped in.
“You’re not asleep yet?” she whispered.
“I’m just watching the lights, I need to cheer up a little, it’ll be tough acting all enthusiastic and entertaining people in tomorrow’s show if I’m…” Mana didn’t want to say “sad”. For whatever reason whenever someone uttered that word she actually began weeping when she actually was down. Even if she wasn’t down, that word being thrown around made her mood somewhat bummy.
“Oh? Need a kiss to help?” mother suggested emanating that same cheerfulness Mana was looking for.
“No.” the teen cut down firmly. Somehow she’d have felt embarrassed if mother pecked her on the head, almost like that moment would’ve been instantly transmitted to all of her friends even if no one would’ve known. Mana would’ve known and that would’ve been enough.
“Suit yourself, don’t stay up too long now.” mother suggested and quietly closed the door.
Mana’s cheek bumped against her bent knees and she burrowed in her bed cover. She wanted someone there, someone who would’ve understood her, someone who shared her views or at least made a genuine attempt at getting them. It seemed like with each passing day people like that were disappearing from her life. Everyone who marveled her love for all life were weighed over to the other side, changed or even died. She was becoming more and more alone every passing day.
“No, I said…” Mana whispered to herself, “What an idiot…”
*****
The magician was jumping over the tree branches, carefully positioning her leaps, moving as fast as she could. She braced for impact with the leaves that burst and scattered upon her crashing through them like a juggernaut. The girl’s thighs were burning up, her dashes were becoming slower, she covered less and less distance with her leaps and her pace was becoming slower and slower until she moved at a turtle’s pace. Her leaps were focusing on height instead of distance, lying that she was moving at the same pace.
Finally Mana stopped, slipped over one of the branches and slammed her body into another. Gripping it so hard that it almost exploded from pressure and her own fingernails drove into the tree and her own flesh at the same time. Shouting in pain Mana pulled herself onto the branch and surveyed the grasslands that laid ahead, where the forest ended.
There they were: Hanasaku, Kiyomi and Meiko, all lined up and facing off against the enemy. Mana couldn’t see the enemy’s face, it was black and blurry. They had glowing red eyes and wore a twisted smile, curled upwards like a crescent moon and shining pearl white with sharp teeth. The magician focused all of her strength and leaped off of the branch, landing to her team, covering what was left in distance by stumbling forward.
The dark shadowy figure lifted its hand, Mana knew that motion, she had seen it before. Meiko, Kiyomi and Hanasaku were banged up, they looked like they were on their last feet, bleeding and torn up. They must’ve been through one hell of a battle, why wasn’t Mana there? Why was she lagging behind so much?
No. She won’t lose another friend to that mass altering technique, she’s seen it before, analyzed it, every aspect of it, thinking through what could’ve been done differently. Mana’s hands went through the hand seals. Don’t be late, just don’t be late!
The shadowy man screamed out, he was reacting far too violently for what was supposed to be just a simple illusion but people reacted to pleasure in different ways. Perhaps what his brain perceived as pleasure was locked away from him for so long that the resurface of those feelings pained him? The man shook and fell on his knees, banging his head against the dirt, peeling his skin away with his nails as he scratched his skin.
Mana looked down only to see a burst of blood explode through her chest. Someone’s fist was staring out through it as she was hit from behind. There was no pain, the magician just saw red, blood everywhere as she fell on her knees and Hanasaku quickly dispatched of Kiyomi and Meiko and ran to the shadowy man’s aid.
“They were anchors. The village said to make it look like a mission gone wrong…” the woman explained to the man before delivering a flurry of ground shaking blows and completely decimating and leaving him only as a bloody puddle in a fraction of a moment. Sour for the woman’s betrayal and seeing her friends’ lying beside her Mana breathed out her final breath…
*****
The magician’s eyes opened up. It was just a nasty dream. Mana may have felt alienated from her team and her mentor but Hanasaku was no traitor. The whole thing felt suspicious from the start. It was just a dream… The magician burrowed under her cover before she began running out of air and had to “resurface”. Her mouth felt dry. Should she go down and get some water or some juice? Trying to contain her anxiety Mana just switched the sides and closed her eyes. Maybe in time the memories of that dream would go away?
*****
A loud screech, likely that of a bat made Mana cower and cover her head. Something really hairy and big past above her but the magician felt compelled to keep on moving forward. Her objective laid onwards and she couldn’t have stopped and looked around. A small orb of light floated in front of Mana, slowly floating forward and with it carrying the only light source. Without it the magician would be left in total darkness in some weird rocky and smelly cave.
After a good while the sphere stopped. A quick inspection following the feint light track allowed Mana to determine that this was a large central ground where various narrow cave paths met. Out of nowhere the sphere just rocketed upwards before completely getting swallowed up by the darkness. Suddenly Mana was all alone again, in total darkness. Her objective laid outside this cave. The magician slipped her bag off and removed a lightstick, cracking it and returning to the dwarfed world of green feint light.
Ahead of her laid at least thirty two different pathways. The entire cave was filled with holes that lead to different pathways to the point where there could’ve been at least a good sixteen hundred floors up each riddled with entrances or exits, a matter of perspective really, up to where light didn’t even reach Mana filled with countless pathways and little roads, each of which lead her to a different end. Some of them had to be dead ends.
There was no time to waver. Illuminating her way forward with the barely decent light source in her hand Mana kept on walking forward. Inside the first cave she instinctually picked. Her sandals clacked against the rough rocks and minerals beneath her feet for quite some time before they began slurping, the ground must’ve been becoming wet. With a single daring step the magician completely submerged underwater.
Panic took Mana over, she scratched and clawed, desperately trying to surface but her light stick was nowhere to be found and she was underwater and in total darkness. Again and again the magician pushed herself through the water, trying to find and out. Twenty minutes passed, maybe an hour. Even with all of her augmentations her lungs were burning up and begging for air, even if her augmentations allowed her to cheat the instincts to breathe it didn’t help the pain of not breathing for what seemed like an eternity.
A blasting force of water threw Mana out, like a gag reflex of the cave slamming her into the rocky ceiling and then tossing her on a solid and slippery rocks below. The magician stood back up feeling bruises and bleeding cuts at the wet and slimy rocks she just cut on. There were sharp. Just taking a step carelessly could’ve resulted in the rocky surface cutting right through her sandals and into her feet. Mana continued to walk forward. Onwards and onwards through the dark cave until she ended in another crossway, just as tall and impossible to navigate through as the last one. Or maybe they were the same one?! Mana couldn’t tell…
The magician’s knees gave in, she fell painfully on her bottom and curled into a ball.
“Where to now?” she whimpered before screaming loudly into the endless void of the cave that without a doubt only lead into more endless crossways. Crawling on the painfully sharp ground before her hands finally managed to get a grip on this whole balance thing and get the girl back on her feet Mana wandered into another completely dark pathway. Wandering in complete darkness again…
*****
Mana’s eyes burst wide open and she lifted her head just to see if she was okay now. She was in no cave. She was back home, trying to get some sleep before a show next evening. Ahead was a day of pretty tough rehearsals and preparations and she’d still end up improvising on quite a lot of tricks she’d be demonstrating that evening. Maybe that whole show was a bad idea?
The magician once again switched on her other side and looked at the turned chair that obstructed the view of whomever may have been sitting in it. If there was a judgmental mentor figure or a shadowy man willing to hide Mana in a dark cave sitting in it, they would’ve fit in perfectly and still remain hidden. Smiling as their victim laid anxious and confused, too scared and spilled with cold sweat to check if the chair was empty.
Angry Mana burrowed her head under the sheets again. She was such a stupid brat… God she was thirsty, her mouth was dry as a desert!
*****
Konoha was beautiful at night. All those lights, all those different people just walking around admiring the place. Children running around, fighting each other with sticks and throwing smaller wooden leftovers from the ground at each other like shinobi running from an ambush just having found the clutch kunai in their pocket and using it to escape with their life. For a dream so easily about to become reality they tried very hard to live it…
So many people to meet. Mana often forgot how known she was around the village for her magic shows. Very few to none knew her as a ninja, mostly those who have had Mana or some roster of her team work for them as her clients. Sometimes people who heard about it through hearsay and refused to believe it at first… Either way, Mana had done very few notable things as a ninja. Even the whole technology from a different universe was often either forgotten or dismissed to another, more famous ninja.
Contrarily, numerous ninja knew Mana’s status and deeds. Fellow shinobi and kunoichi were rather good at identifying different missions and attributing them to fellow ninja. Had anyone asked a random vest wearing ninja of higher rank what some random chump with a headband had done they’d be able to recall one or two objective fulfilled by the person with remarkable accuracy.
“Mana, you bitch!” Kiyomi’s voice made the magician’s heart freeze as she slowly turned to face her friend.
Surprisingly enough the girl was dressed in a white wedding gown. The last survivor of the wandering ninja could only scratch her temple in confusion of how weird the sight looked and how normal it seemed to passers-by around them. The magician couldn’t muster up a word, she was completely oblivious to what she was even being blamed for.
“Don’t you just stay silent with me! Come on, tell me, why did you miss my wedding!? It was the most important day of my life!” the blonde outright screamed at Mana flailing her arms around frantically and forcing the magician to lean and dodge those gloved hammers of wedding doom in fear.
“Uhm… You’re getting married?” Mana said the first thing in her mind only to be punched in the face. For a lady in a wedding dress Kiyomi punched lightning fast and as strong and subtle as a rampaging dinosaur.
“Do you have any idea how Meiko feels!? You were our best friend! You missed the most important day of our lives! We’re through! You hear me? Through!” Kiyomi leaned up to Mana’s face yelling so loudly and articulating so clearly that there could’ve been no rumors about this. Just about every word was cold factual proof all by itself to just about anyone around the world.
Somehow Mana picked herself off the ground. She was surprised that no teeth scattered or her jaw didn’t get completely blown off. Her augmentations worked on point and on time but maybe it would’ve been better if they didn’t. How could she have missed Kiyomi’s wedding? Clearly it meant a great deal to her friend…
“Wait, Meiko? I thought if you were to get married you’d go for Eiju and not for some more years in the future?” Mana still caressed the part of the jaw she was socked in.
“Eiju!?” Kiyomi turned around and ran up to Mana again picking the girl up by her collar like she was a ragdoll before winding up another punch. “How fucking dare you!? After you completely missed his funeral!? After you were on a mission while he wondered where you were in his deathbed! How fucking dare you!” she screamed before dropping Mana and just storming off.
Mana remained speechless. Her legs just didn’t move. She didn’t know how to react to all those things. Wait… They couldn’t have actually happened…
*****
Slight peeks of Sun began showing far away into the horizon. There may have been a good couple of hours left till morning. The magician finally gathered the courage to stand up and walk past the mysterious cushioned chair and leave her room. Slowly descend down the stairs and head to the kitchen. Even her mother wasn’t up yet, it must’ve been really early but the magician didn’t check the clock in either her own room nor the living room, or the kitchen for that matter.
A large purple jug sat on top of the table. Mana peeked over the edge of the doorway leading into the kitchen. As a little kid she always dreaded walking into the kitchen in the evenings or the nights, even passing it by. That damned purple jug always looked to her like a little demonic imp sitting on the table and smiling at her. Granted little Mana couldn’t see any eyes or teeth but they were there in her imagination.
With a relieved grin the magician walked into the kitchen and picked up a glass, trying to be quiet so that she didn’t interrupt the couple of hours of sleep her mother still had before getting up and leaving to work. With blank eyes showing a spaced out expression the magician walked up to the jug and spilled in some carrot juice from it. It was so silly that her mother stored Mana’s favorite drink in her most dreaded object. Or maybe it was just right, that way as a little brat she wouldn’t get plumped on carrot juice and explode.
Mana giggled while looking at the purple jug and easily twisting it around a bit before she finished her juice. It was no imp, just like there was no one sitting in her chair. Subconsciously the magician may have known that, she was no little child anymore. Still, even if people she was thinking about so often or dreading weren’t even close to sitting in her chair and watching her sleep, they were far too indifferent about one silly magician girl from Konoha, they still existed.
In more ways than one, they were much closer to Mana than sitting in her room’s chair watching her sleep. They were inside her the whole time. In her mind, in her heart. They weren’t just watching her sleep, they were with her this whole time. Chestnut Hanasaku would never betray her team and leave them for dead. She probably won’t get lost in some cave or miss Kiyomi’s wedding, whomever the Yamanaka decides to marry. Those were just some silly dreams… They didn’t mean anything in the end. Just like this jug was no demonic imp sent to claw Mana’s eyes out for wandering around the house at night…
Mana kept telling herself that before returning to bed and burrowing herself under her warm sheets and settling into her round and warm pillow. Hope to still catch some sleep was still alive. Hope always died last.
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